A Chatter of Choughs
Edited
by Lucy Newlyn
Illustrated by Lucy Wilkinson
An anthology celebrating the return of Cornwall's legendary bird.
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A Chatter of Choughs Edited
by Lucy Newlyn An anthology celebrating the return of Cornwall's legendary bird. |
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For centuries, the chough has been integral to Cornish legend. King Arthur's soul is said to have migrated into one when he died, and coats of arms throughout Cornwall feature this magnificent bird with its distinctive red beak and feet. From the 1970s onward, the chough was believed extinct in its own country. But in 2001, three wild birds landed on Cornwall's Lizard Peninsula, and began to breed ............. |
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A rich collection of specially commissioned work, featuring some of Britain's leading poets and scholars, Chatter of Choughs intertwines poetry, prose and illustrations with ornithological accounts of the chough's recent fortunes in Cornwall and further afield. With a new introduction by Lucy Newlyn, a Foreward by Jon Stallworthy, an Afterword by Charles Thomas, and thirty new contributions (some in Cornish), the second edition of this popular anthology brings the fascinating, inspiring story of the Cornish chough up to date. Published by The Hypatia Trust in association with St. Edmund Hall, Oxford.
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Frank Rhurmund in The Cornishman wrote - It includes works by such Cornwall-based poets as Victoria Field, John Gordon, Nicholas Round, the one and only John Harris, and poems in Cornish and English by Pol Hodge and Les Merton, plus works from elsewhere by such major poets as Tom Paulin, Anne Ridler, and Kevin Crossley-Holland. |
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However, it's most encouraging feature perhaps is the hope it extends for the future of both the chough and Cornwall in the works of its youngest contributors - the joint winners of the Hypatia Trust/RSPB/St. Edmund Hall Poetry Competition for schools held last year, The Waiting Chough by Andrew Strick, Lanner School, Redruth, and The Return of the Chough by William Gerry, Whitstone CP School, Holsworthy, Devon. |
| An anthology which more than lives up to its claim, and, in fact, celebrates the return of Cornwall's legendary bird in considerable style, and one in which its editor Professor Lucy Newlyn achieves a pleasing balance between erudition and entertainment. In addition to its poems it alos provides such pleasing prose pieces as Lucy Reynolds' Thomas and Emma Hardy: A Courtship Among The Choughs and Iain Bain's Bewick's Chough. |
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